Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century

A History of Japanese Literature #1

by Donald Keene

Donald Keene employs his prodigious wealth of knowledge, critical insight, and narrative aplomb to guide readers through the first nine hundred years of Japanese literature―a period that not only defined the unique properties of Japanese prosody and prose but also produced some of its greatest works. Covering courtly fiction, Buddhist writings, war tales, diaries, poems, and more, Seeds in the Heart explores a vast and variegated treasury of writings. Detailed textual examinations of classic texts―from the Kojiki to The Tale of Genji, from The Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon to Zeami's Nô plays―allow students, lay readers, and scholars a new understanding and enjoyment of this great literature.

Genres: Japan, Literature, Nonfiction, History, Japanese Literature, Literary Criticism, Japanese History

1265 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 1999

About the author

Donald Keene was a renowned American-born Japanese scholar, translator, and historian of Japanese literature. Born in Brooklyn in 1922, he developed a love for foreign cultures early in life. He graduated from Columbia University in 1942 and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, where he studied Japanese at the Navy Language School. After the war, he returned to Columbia for his master’s and later earned a second master’s at Cambridge, followed by a PhD from Columbia in 1949. He studied further at Kyoto University and became a leading authority on Japanese literature.
Keene taught at Columbia University for over fifty years and published extensively in both English and Japanese, introducing countless readers to Japanese classics. His mentors included Ryusaku Tsunoda and Arthur Waley, whose translations deeply influenced him. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Keene retired from Columbia, moved to Japan, and became a Japanese citizen under the name Kīn Donarudo. He was awarded the Order of Culture in 2008, the first non-Japanese recipient. Keene remained active in literary and cultural life in Japan until his death in 2019 at the age of 96.

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to learn about Japanese literature, this book (and the rest of Keene's history) is a great place to start. It's like sitting down with your favorite professor over tea and having him tell you about his favorite works. Keene's natural prose is backed up with good scholarship and a lot of references, so if you want to continue in a line of study, it's very easy to branch out. Highly recommended.

[Toros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough in its range of texts and the detail it pays them, this is the ultimate reference material for early Japanese lit. Thanks to the combination of a fascinating subject matter and Keene's natural prose, it's also wonderful rainy day reading material. I very highly recommend it.

[Paul Kerschen]

Magisterial, and since so many of the source texts are so brief, it has the feel of a guided anthology.

[Persephone Abbott · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s simply amazing what you think you must read when you are 29. Which was about when I bought this 1300 pager. I even fully intended to read the next volume. And twenty years later I finally get around to reading it, because I don’t want to pack it and move it again to a new house. Obviously a volume of great importance when learning about Japanese literature without being able to read Japanese. Not quite the page turner I had hoped for, I much rather just read the literature, albeit in translation, than a description of the literature but no matter, I did enjoy this read.

[F B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best literature anthology ever made, reads like a book, makes you want to read the follow up.

[Manuel Del Río Rodríguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donald Keene's "Seeds in the Heart" is the first of his 4 volume History of Japanese Literature. This one covers the works from the beginnings of the said literature till the late sixteenth century (Momoyama Period). The other 3 are about literature of the Edo period ("World within walls") and the post-Meiji restoration pieces, with 1 volume for prose, another one for the rest ("Dawn to the West").

Keene's book is an authentic Tour de Force, and arguably, the best History of the Japanese Literature that anyone who reads in English can access. This first volume include a stagering 1200 pages of essays and work, and cover in a very high (and sometimes, detailed) degree the main productions of the literature of the times: from Heian diaries, Imperial Anthologies, Prose Romances, Renga... You name it.

The scholarship is very well done, and yet the book remains very readable and enjoyable, with lots of excerpts and explanations. Information on translations is also ubiquitous.

In conclusion: if you're interested in having a detailed and well written summary of Japanese literature in English, this is were you'll get it. The only criticism I can make of the work is, perhaps, that the author clearly judges Japanese works from the standpoint of Western aesthetic discourse (privileging for example 'depth', 'subjectiveness', 'realism' and 'originality'). I totally share this stance, but I imagine there's others who wouldn't be so happy with it.

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unentbehrlich, wenn man sich einen Überblick über einen berühmten Text der Vormoderne verschaffen will. Gelegentlich sind die Einschätzungen von Keene über den Wert der Literatur geprägt entweder von westlichen Maßstäben oder den gängigen Meinungen japanischer Literaturwissenschaft. Wenn man über diese Einschätzungen hinweglesen kann: großartige Leistung, phantastisches Buch.